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DRESDEN, STILL AND AGAIN

IT would be hard for the responsive traveler from Britain or America to visit the city of Dresden without some unease. The British-American fire-bombing of February 1945 has become an epic of the Second World War, and, like epics of earlier wars, acquires a deeper resonance every year through argument, refining and retelling. It is part of all our histories, and provides the inescapable context within which to marvel at what survived in Dresden, what has been restored, and what is happening there now.

Dresden has one of the most beautiful opera houses ever built and one of Europe's finest orchestras, which Wagner once compared to a ''magic harp.'' The art collections are world-class. The outer districts, rich in 19th-century villas and largely undamaged in the raids, rise from the great, curving Elbe and merge into vineyards and woodland. In a crystal palace for Volkswagens Dresden now has one of the most elegant car plants ever built, too.

Nothing here is done by halves. The domed Frauenkirche -- for half a century a heap of stones -- is rising again and will be a symbol of rebirth worldwide when it is finished in 2005; Americans and Britons are closely involved. The Residence, or Schloss, the royal palace of the Wettin dynasty, will take longer, but it, too, is returning to life. The new synagogue is open: resembling a fortified ark on the outside, with only one row of small windows, it is beautiful and consoling within, where a curtain of gold thread encloses the congregation like a tent.

The major historic attractions are all within a few minutes' walk of each other, around Theaterplatz and the Brühl Terrace. It would be possible to visit for the day from either Berlin (120 miles) or Prague (91), but I wouldn't recommend it. Dresden's too good for that. In April my partner and I stayed six nights and still left things to see next time. We spent three days in the city and three beyond, going everywhere on foot, or by tram and S-Bahn (local train).

Once you leave Theaterplatz, there is no disguising the fact that the old pattern of streets and squares vanished forever in 1945. The firestorm swept through the heart of the city and inner suburbs, and sucked the buildings hollow. The dead (35,000? 50,000?) could not be counted. Most of Theaterplatz was restored under the Communists, but as a kind of heritage island. The rest of the ruins were replaced by a new, utilitarian city: despite much recent planting and general cheering up, feelings of disorientation persist, and much remains to be done. It is crucial, therefore, never to forget one thing: despite the city's later tragic history, the key to the cultural character of Dresden remains pleasure.

Pleasure, playfulness and mischief. This is the capital of Saxony, and Saxons -- led by rulers who invested their wealth in beautiful things -- have always known how to enjoy themselves. On top of his opera house (1869), a mere goblet's throw from the Roman Catholic cathedral, the architect, Gottfried Semper, placed Dionysos and Ariadne, heading for ecstatic bliss in a chariot drawn by four panthers. Semper's theater staged the premieres of all Richard Strauss's most famous operas, where the pull of Dionysos is invoked in music as sexy and long-limbed as the satyrs and nymphs carved by Balthasar Permoser on the walls of the Zwinger Palace, rebuilt in the 1950's. Permoser's smiling, half-stoned people, their loins draped in pears, pomegranates and grapes, solicit without shame.

The Zwinger was designed by Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann in 1719 as a festive setting for royal entertainment: weddings, operas, fireworks and a porcelain collection whose painted figures by Johann Joachim Kaendler dance, ride, flirt and sing. In the Green Vault, a sumptuous collection of decorative objects and jewels at the Albertinum, a tiny, naked Diana dips an ivory toe into a bath filled by silver-filigree dolphins. Pleasure all the way.

The Wettins began collecting in the Renaissance, and came to believe that they might achieve influence and power through the art they had collected. (Well, it had worked for the Medicis). Augustus the Strong (1670-1733), king of Poland and elector of Saxony, aspired to be the Sun King of Eastern Europe and compared himself to the rulers of India, China and Japan. Pre-Hollywood Western fantasies of the mysterious East reach a zenith in the Green Vault, where the most popular item is the glittering scene of miniature Indian figures, gifts, elephants and horses entitled ''The Royal Household on the Birthday of the Grand Moghul Aurung-Zeb.'' This tableau is one of my favorite things in all Dresden -- the inventiveness and craftsmanship (to say nothing of Augustus's magnificent diamonds) are stunning. Be warned, though: the Green Vault is a toy box of gorgeous treasures for the irresponsibly rich, so the high-minded sometimes take against it.

Above all, Augustus was afflicted to near bankruptcy with what he himself called la maladie de porcelaine, setting up the first successful European porcelain factory in Meissen under Johann Friedrich Böttger and famously buying 151 Chinese pieces from the King of Prussia in exchange for 600 dragoons. Some of these soldiers were later used to attack Saxony, so you can see why the Prussians eventually ran Germany. But the ''Dragoon'' vases survived and can be admired at the Zwinger once its Porcelain Gallery reopens Oct. 8 after renovations.

The passion of his son, Augustus III (1696-1763), was for paintings. In 1752 he bought Raphael's Sistine Madonna, which heads the superb collection of European Old Masters in Semper's Gemäldegalerie (Picture Gallery) next to the Zwinger. Giorgione, Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Cranach, Dürer, Poussin and Velázquez are among those represented by major work. Being a Veronese fan, I usually make first for ''The Marriage at Cana,'' to relish the perfection with which the great man places Jesus' miracle at the heart of a bustling social occasion where the caterers are no less interesting than the guests. The 19th- and early-20th-century New Masters -- mostly German -- are led by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), and share the Albertinum building with the Green Vault.

One place to savor the spirit and texture of Dresden is the small, raised garden on the Brühl Terrace, overlooking the river bend. This is a garden of ghosts. Here Friedrich painted from memory the spellbinding landscapes he had seen in the mountains to the south. Canaletto's nephew Bellotto faced the other way and recorded the celebrated skyline in the haunting, silver-blue light he gave to many townscapes in Saxony and Poland.

Below the garden was the ''Jews' House,'' where Victor Klemperer and his wife, Eva, were forced to live for the last two years of the Second World War. As Shrove Tuesday passed into Ash Wednesday and the firestorm gathered force, the Klemperers walked out of the house, lost one another, and were reunited hours later in this garden. Eva, who was not Jewish, tore off Victor's yellow star, and they began their incredible 12-week journey of survival. Klemperer's diaries of life in the Third Reich give the clearest view of how slowly, relentlessly and maliciously a man could be stripped of all rights and assets in the middle of the 20th century -- and go on.

If you have only one day for a trip out, consider taking the S-Bahn to Königstein, 15 miles to the southeast, or the boat to the Wettins' summer palace at Pillnitz. Either way, you get the mysterious, magnificent Elbe, Germany's greatest river after the Rhine.

Königstein is a formidable medieval and Renaissance fortress that commands the landscape of tabletop rocks, winding gorges, stone chimneys and the occasional crashed tree that so thrilled Romantics like Friedrich and Carl Maria von Weber, composer of ''Der Freischütz.'' These are the Elbe Sandstone Mountains -- also known as Saxon Switzerland, although ''Mesas With Forest On'' would be nearer the mark. The weather during our visit was thrillingly Romantic, too: hectic sunshine, biting gale, squalls of rain and enormous, racing, white clouds. On top, there is enough room for a small garrison town, with cafes, a Pöppelmann belvedere and a little wood. The views stretch from the faint outskirts of Dresden to beyond the Czech border and the pale Bohemian mountain that Friedrich loved to paint.

We went to Pillnitz not by boat but overland, to see more of the city. We took the No. 12 tram to the Blaues Wunder (Blue Marvel) -- a cast-iron bridge of 1893, which crosses the Elbe with irrelevant grandeur between Blasewitz and Loschwitz, and is indeed painted a fetching, if architecturally unconventional, shade of powder blue. These two suburbs are a delight. On Goetheallee in Blasewitz are some of the best restored villas in Dresden, and in hilly, wooded Loschwitz, where Schiller completed ''Don Carlos,'' there are beer gardens, terraced cafes and two very jolly centenarians from the heroic, ''Hello, Dolly!'' age of weekend excursions: a funicular and a schwebebahn (suspension railway), both recently restored.

From Blasewitz we crossed the Blue Marvel by bus and followed the right bank of the river to visit Ulrike Birkner-Kettenacker, a friend of friends who is a Lutheran pastor in charge of two of Dresden's prettiest Baroque churches: Maria am Wasser, by the river meadows at Hosterwitz, and the Weinbergkirche, a former royal chapel a mile or so upstream. Hosterwitz has become a popular wedding church, where Ulrike marries couples -- in English, if required -- from all over the world.

She directed us to Pillnitz along the old Dresden road, where we walked via Weber's summer cottage, filled with mementos of the composer's short, prodigious career cruelly ended by a consumptive death in London in 1826.

The light was beginning to fade as we entered the park at Pillnitz, passed the fantastical ''Chinese'' palaces and arrived at the Elbe steps, where the Wettin barges used to moor. Stone sphinxes, heads in the air, stared across the stream to the pheasants' island. Two scullers rowed past in the dusk. An old cherry tree big as a black dragon had fallen, mostly died, then sprawled towards the water in a final explosion of dazzling white. There was almost no sound, and the spell deepened further when we walked through a door on the way to supper and found ourselves in a large lilac garden crammed to the corners with trees of every knockout scent and shade. After supper, we returned to the now dark river one last time, and discovered a little pension at the water's edge. We wondered if the pheasants would wake the guests at dawn, but decided it really was as idyllic as it looked. Then we took the bus and tram back to town.

What survived, what's been restored, where to go

Getting There

There are regular flights from Frankfurt, which take about an hour. Trains run roughly every half-hour from Berlin Ostbahnhof and take about two and a half hours.

To get to Königstein by S-Bahn, take the S-1 for Schöna from Dresden's main station, the Hauptbahnhof. Trains run every 20 minutes, and take45 minutes to Königstein.

The extensive, prize-winning brochure ''The Land and Its People: Travels Through Saxony'' is available free from the German National Tourist Office, 122 East 42nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10168; (212) 661-7200; and the excellent Tourist Information Office on Theaterplatz is staffed by English speakers.

The Frauenkirche building site has its own visitors center on the Neumarkt. Guided tours of the completed crypt are available daily; www.frauenkirche-dresden.org.

Visits to the new synagogue can be arranged through the Jewish Community in Dresden, Am Hasenberg 1, (49-351) 656-070, or through the Hatikva Learning Center for Jewish History and Culture, Pulsnilzer Strasse 10, (49-351) 656-8825.

Most museums are closed Thursdays, but the Gemäldegalerie is closed Mondays, and the Porcelain Gallery at the Zwinger is closed for restoration till Oct. 8. Museum hours are generally 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and admission is $4.50, except at the Old Masters ($3.60) and the Porcelain Gallery ($2.60).

Next time I may explore the more individual, 50-room Martha-Hospiz, Nieritzstrasse 11, (49-351) 81760, fax (49-351) 817-6222, www.vch.de, also in Neustadt, where doubles are $102 to $118, or the 174-room art'otel, Ostra Allee 33, (49-351) 49220, fax (49-351) 492-2777, www.artotel.de, near the Zwinger; doubles, $166 to $215.

For a splurge, try the splendid Kempinski Taschenberg Palais, Am Taschenberg 3, (49-351) 49120, fax (49-351) 491-2812, www.taschenbergpalais.de, which is in the former love nest of Augustus the Strong's favorite mistress, just off Theaterplatz. Doubles $280; breakfast $21 each.

Transportation

The Dresden City Card, available at the Tourist Information Office on Theaterplatz, costs $16, is valid for 48 hours for transportation within the city, admission to the major museums and discounts on tours. The Regio Card at $25 gives all the above for 72 hours, plus S-Bahn trips to Meissen, Pirna, Königstein and the Czech border.

Fischgalerie, Maxstrasse 2, (49-351) 490-3506, served very good red mullet, sashimi, soft polenta, delightful service and (rare in Dresden) a welcome bit of big-city buzz. Dinner for two, with wine, $120.

We ate almost as well in the Schloss Hotel Dresden Pillnitz, Böckelstiegel Strasse 10, (49-351) 26140, where dinner for two (leek soup, quail breast in rösti, cucumber sorbet) with wine came to $80, but this is fancy-fusion food beside the traditional Mittel-European cuisine you see everywhere.

For that I would recommend the German-Czech Wenzel Prager Bierstuben, Königstrasse 1, (49-351) 804-2010, Great, good-hearted atmosphere. Dinner for two (salad of chicken livers, pork schnitzel, pike-perch and poppy-seed strudel), with beer, $45.

More genteel but equally tasty was Paulaner's, the Bavarian brasserie at the Kempinski, Am Taschenberg 3, (49-351) 491-2893, where I had Tafelspitz (the tenderest boiled beef), $9.80, and apple strudel, $4.70.

Local white wines from the Elbe Valley are generally available -- we drank an excellent Müller-Thurgau -- for about $15 a bottle. Good beers included a dark Neuzeller Kloster Bräu for $3.10 a pint, and Köstritzer. Czech beers are widely available, including the honeyed Staropramen and Pilsner-